[up_o]

this is a funny question. Avoiding tangents, for all intents and purposes, I'm secular. Though I've only had two children with no intention of having more, I was raised Southern Baptist, the oldest of six. I love our big family. My mother was one of seven, and all her siblings have many children as well. I look back fondly on our holiday gatherings and miss them dearly. my aunts were guardian angels through so many difficult times. But as much as I want those big family gatherings and the overall dynamic, I couldn't imagine going back to Southern Baptism as a means to see them perpetuated. It would be nice if there were a natalist "movement" (for lack of better word) that was more or less secular (without being self-aggrandizing and delusional ala effective altruism).

[toasterlovin]

Yeah, wanting a secular natalist movement is where I was for a while. But then the truth of it hits you at some point: it will never exist. The secular way of life exalts the individual, but raising a large family is about subduing your own desires and devoting yourself to something more important than yourself. Well, guess who already does that: religious people.

[kelnos]

> The secular way of life exalts the individual

Wow, that is not my experience at all. I think in some ways that's perhaps a very US-centric view, even though I'd still consider that a flawed way at looking at secularism in the US. Most of the developed world is fairly secular (even among those with religious beliefs), and extreme individualism is not as common as you seem to think.

I do wonder how common your attitude is among religious people, though. If it's common, that would explain a few things...

[cooper_ganglia]

I was raised in a very religious household, but I left the fairly young. I spent the next couple decades around a large amount of both religious and secular people. It’s been my anecdotal experience that religious people are exponentially more likely to volunteer and donate to help others. I’ve seen yards cleaned, homes rebuilt, soup kitchens hosted, mobile laundry services and free shoes/clothes for the homeless, church closet giveaways (basically a free yard sale for the community), hundreds of doctors filling a convention center volunteering their time and money to treat people for free,… I don’t doubt non-religious people are doing these things, but I don’t think it’s at the same scale, and the secular nonprofits that are offering this kind of help often skim a lot off the top to pay beefy corporate salaries.

[nkrisc]

The secular way of life is an individual way of life, in the sense that it’s different for everyone. Some choose rugged individualism, some choose to devote themselves to their community.

[achenet]

I can find a small army of secular leftists who subdue their own desires and have devoted themselves to something more important than themselves - namely, overthrowing the capitalist system.

They don't make many babies though, because they've subdued their desires to reproduce and devoted themselves to the good of the planet ;)